Bible Review

I am indebted to the helpful study of my friend and colleague at St. Andrews, Richard J. Bauckham, whose book Gospel Women (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002) provided the inspiration for this brief essay. He comes to the same conclusion.

See Witherington, Women in the Ministry of Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984) and Women and the Genesis of Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990).

See Witherington and Darlene Hyatt, Paul’s Letter to the Romans (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), pp. 387–390.

The Greek word episemoi can mean any of these things and in all cases is a superlative of some sort. Whether he called them prominent or notable or outstanding apostles, Paul clearly thinks highly of them. The Greek phrase has sometimes been taken to mean notable to the apostles or even noted by the apostles, but the Greek preposition en here surely has its normal meaning of “in” or “among,” as the earliest Greek commentators on this verse, Origen and John Chrysostom, admit.

See Witherington, The Paul Quest (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998).

Richard J. Bauckham, Gospel Women (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), pp. 109–202.

On all these Lukan stories, see Ben Witherington III and Amy-Jill Levine, The Gospel of Luke (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, forthcoming in 2006).

It is a striking fact that there is no mention of John the Baptist having female followers, and anyone who reads Josephus’s Antiquities from cover to cover will search in vain for references to female followers of the Pharisees, of Judas the Galilean (or the other Zealots), of Honi the Circle or of Hanina Ben Dosa.